Howdy. I've been playing Armada for a few years now (non-competitively with my friends) and have been thinking about getting into X-Wing. I really enjoy the fleet-sized battles of Armada, but there are a few things about X-Wing that appeal to me. But before I make the investment and diversify my gaming dollar, I have a few comments and questions. I'd really appreciate the feedback and any answers or insight you X-Wing players have. Thanks !

Here are a few reasons I was thinking about X-Wing-

1. Smaller table size. Setting up on a 3' x 3' mat is easier and quicker. I like the idea of being able to travel and set-up and X-Wing game with a smaller footprint (I already have two FFG mats anyway)

2. Reduced play time. I've heard that the play time for a game of X-Wing is less than Armada. Is it ? By how much time for a standard or a small game ?

3. More players. I see a lot more X-Wing players and tournaments for X-Wing than Armada where I live (Central California, United States) and meeting new people to play might be nice.

4. I don't really care that much about "tournament scenes" or "the meta". I play non-competitively even when I play in competitive settings and I only want to buy ships that are in movies or maybe the TV shows. What ships in that group are pretty good (on both sides) for a new player to get a pretty good (i.e. fun to play) Imperial and Rebel squadron together ? How many ships will I need ?

Thanks again for your feedback and help, everyone.

1. Yep. 3x3 is easier to find space for than a 6x3.
2. Reduced time, but it can vary. Armada has a hard turn finish (after 6 turns?) but an untimed X-Wing game can produce long games in certain match ups. Tournament style though the time limit is 75 minutes.
3. Yes, there are definitely more X-Wing players in our location as well...
4. If all you're going to fly are fun and thematic ships... the answer to 'how many you need' will be really, how many can you afford? Which ones do you want? 4 X-Wings is pretty near a full list, and you won't have room for another ship. Imperial ships you'll need more because they are typically cheaper, but you get twice as many Imperial ships in the starter box right off the bat. The core sets are a great deal for getting started as you're pretty much getting one ship free for the cost. Watch for aces packs as well, as these are pretty good deals too.

Playtime is usually 30-90m, sometimes it runs longer but quite rare for that. Ships die in xwing considerably easier than they do in Armada; i never played Armada competitively but the only time i ever had a ship die in 1 shot was when an MC30 got doublearc on a Raider and just flattened it lol.

Tournament scene can be avoided fairly easily since unless theres a big tournament coming in a week or two generally people dont run metawing at gamenights. Least for me they dont, out of the usual 10ish people we get on wednesday there might be 1 list using something meta-defined.

To get started, i suggest looking at the 101 articles. They arent perfect but theyre good starting points and the idea is to only spend $101USD and be able to play with decent ships.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/2/8/x-wing-101-imperial-veterans/
(Note: For the Imperial 101, i would recommend getting a TIE/fo box instead of an Awing box so you stay with all imp purchases. The Juke card in the TIE/fo box goes wonders on a TIE Defender with the x7 title!)
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/4/7/x-wing-101-bombs-away/
Note: The issue with this one for starting out is it involves a Primary Weapon Turret ship (PWT). Personally i am against teaching someone how to play with this, but this is an exception since Rey wants to keep ships in her firing arc anyway.

For number 4, I would look at purchasing 2 identical core sets (either one). Familiarize yourself with the basic concept, and get a squad builder and find ships you want to play (aka your favorite ship/pilot in the Star Wars universe), and build your "dream" 100 point squadron. Figure out which upgrades come in which expansions, and slowly build your way to your dream squad. (I did this to start buying 2 small ships a pay check.)

I have always been a YT-2400 fan since the Shadows of the Empire multi-media project. So I figured out what a good 100 point squadron based around Dash would be. And now I own way too many of these plastic crack pieces.

Oh, and you can never have enough TIE fighters.

2 hours ago, Nightmonkey said:

1. Smaller table size. Setting up on a 3' x 3' mat is easier and quicker. I like the idea of being able to travel and set-up and X-Wing game with a smaller footprint (I already have two FFG mats anyway)

2. Reduced play time. I've heard that the play time for a game of X-Wing is less than Armada. Is it ? By how much time for a standard or a small game ?

3. More players. I see a lot more X-Wing players and tournaments for X-Wing than Armada where I live (Central California, United States) and meeting new people to play might be nice.

4. I don't really care that much about "tournament scenes" or "the meta". I play non-competitively even when I play in competitive settings and I only want to buy ships that are in movies or maybe the TV shows. What ships in that group are pretty good (on both sides) for a new player to get a pretty good (i.e. fun to play) Imperial and Rebel squadron together ? How many ships will I need ?

Thanks again for your feedback and help, everyone.

OTOH, since you are used to these things, and enjoy casual, Epic is an awesome way to play X-Wing, and will still be very different than both 3x3 X-Wing and Armada.

Buy at least one of the core sets, after that, buy what you like... If you want more than one, see if there's a box set with the ship you want in it. Saw you wanted 2 A-wings. Get the stand alone A- wing and the Rebel Veterans set.

Just be sure to play a few games with the core set first to be sure you enjoy the game enough to invest...

I would also recommend looking into a fan made campaign pack that is free. It's called "Heroes of the Aturi Cluster" and is a co-operative game. That means 2-6 players all on the same side playing vs. a surprisingly nasty AI Imperial opponent. It's some of the best X-wing you will ever play. It is good fun.

You will find that there are people who play tournament level and there are those that play....more casually. If you don't want to do high meta builds, look for the casual players. Then again, if you want tournament, you shouldn't have too hard a time finding them!

Something you'll likely find frustrating in X-Wing, coming from Armada, is that it's a MUCH "dicier" game. That contributes a lot to how quickly it plays, but lacking fixed defense tokens, and relying on dice instead...you'll run into situations where you should have taken no damage from an attack at all, and instead just explode taking 1/3 of your list out in a single luck shot...or situations where you worked hard to line up a 'sure thing', and after burning one-off upgrades and mods manage an amazing 5 hits on an enemy with no evade or focus results...and he rolls 5 natural evades to take no damage at all.

So your question seems a bit contradictory to me. You ask which ships from the movies (or maybe cartoons) are doing well, but then say you just play casually. There's a definite power creep going on the past year or so, where the on-screen stuff is just 100% outclassed by newer stuff. But here's my opinion of the on screen stuff:

T-65 X Wing - you'll come across the occasional list with Wedge/Wes/Luke, but it's really surprising to see a T-65 not named Biggs on the table. It's completely outclassed by several things.

Y Wing - There's a common "stresshog" build, but that's been mostly outclassed by the ARC-170, but it'll still show up a bit because it's a few points cheaper. Otherwise, the Y wing is non-existent.

A Wing - In the current meta, 2 dice attacks are useless. And therefore the A wing is useless. Some people have had fun messing around with Snap Shot Juke A Wings, and perhaps in the hand of a skilled player might be viable, but it's a fringe case.

B Wing - 100% outclassed by the new Auzituck. But even before that, the B wing is a straight up jouster that doesn't have a good jousting efficiency in a meta where jousters aren't doing well.

YT-1300 - This ship is actually doing well. The old school Fat Han can still be decent, but the new hotness is Rey, which is a tier 1.5 ship right now.

T-70 X Wing - Decent ship with some fun pilots. You can definitely be competitive with Poe, Jess, Nien, or Ello, but Jess is probably the only tier 1 pilot. For the marginal point increase, 100% outclasses the T-65.

U Wing - Trash ship. Though if you're playing epic games, it has some synergy uses.

I think that's it for Rebel in-movie ships.

From the Cartoons, the Ghost is a clear tier 1 ship and has tons of building options to it. The attack shuttle isn't that good as a stand alone option, but is great docked onto the Ghost. The ARC-170 is a tier 1.5 ship as well. Sabine's TIE has seem some uses as both Rex and Ahsoka. Otherwise it's useless.

For the Imps...

TIE fighter - best bang for the buck, though the current meta doesn't encourage cheap efficient ships

TIE advanced - With the x1 title and ATC they are rather viable. I'd recommend Vader for the double action, but probably tops out at a tier 2 ship.

TIE interceptor - Soontir Fel is awesome. Carnor Jax is great. The rest are trash. Sadly, the meta right now has a lot of auto-damage keeping these expensive frail ships off the main screen.

Lambda Shuttle - It's been a shuttle its entire life, either carrying Vader around, or more recently the Emperor. It's very clunky and hard to get its points back due to its dial, but is effective if you can.

TIE/FO - Pretty good upgrade over the TIE fighter, but kinda defeats the "cheapest thing out there" concept. That said, Zeta leader is probably tier 1.5 and Omega Leader is tier 1.

TIE/SF - Awesome ship, both Backdraft and Quickdraw are top tier. Fun ship too.

TIE striker - Pretty fun ship to fly around, and has some quality pilots, probably tier 2 overall though.

Upsilon Shuttle - This thing is nasty with its 4 dice primary, it's not as clumsy as the Lambda, but it's hard to find the points for it in a list. Still a solid ship if you want to work around its weaknesses.

Firespray - Technically it's an imperial ship from the days before Scum was its own faction. It sucks in both factions.

And I'm assuming if you're referring to on-screen stuff, you don't really care about scum much, so the few ships on screen there aren't worth discussing.

13 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Something you'll likely find frustrating in X-Wing, coming from Armada, is that it's a MUCH "dicier" game. That contributes a lot to how quickly it plays, but lacking fixed defense tokens, and relying on dice instead...you'll run into situations where you should have taken no damage from an attack at all, and instead just explode taking 1/3 of your list out in a single luck shot...or situations where you worked hard to line up a 'sure thing', and after burning one-off upgrades and mods manage an amazing 5 hits on an enemy with no evade or focus results...and he rolls 5 natural evades to take no damage at all.

While this is true - the best of the best play in such a way that they never rely upon dice coming through for them. They don't need to get those 5 hits through because they have a plan regardless. Doesn't mean it's not frustrating and doesn't happen, but you can also make the same statement about Armada... The thing had 1 hull left and my ISD1 had a close range shot... it rolled accuracies on all the blue dice, and blanks on the red/black. FML!

3 minutes ago, Khyros said:

So your question seems a bit contradictory to me. You ask which ships from the movies (or maybe cartoons) are doing well, but then say you just play casually.

Thanks for the advice ! Huge help. You're absolutely right that when I reread my post it was a tad contradictory. If I ever show up at a competitive setting, I just don't want to get blown out of the water completely, I guess, and maximize my dollar spent. I will still buy ships that look cool even if they're not totally awesome, but I'd just like to know if I'm going to get some bang for my buck...If that makes any sense. Again, thanks.

3 hours ago, Nightmonkey said:

Howdy. I've been playing Armada for a few years now (non-competitively with my friends) and have been thinking about getting into X-Wing. I really enjoy the fleet-sized battles of Armada, but there are a few things about X-Wing that appeal to me. But before I make the investment and diversify my gaming dollar, I have a few comments and questions. I'd really appreciate the feedback and any answers or insight you X-Wing players have. Thanks !

Here are a few reasons I was thinking about X-Wing-

1. Smaller table size. Setting up on a 3' x 3' mat is easier and quicker. I like the idea of being able to travel and set-up and X-Wing game with a smaller footprint (I already have two FFG mats anyway)

2. Reduced play time. I've heard that the play time for a game of X-Wing is less than Armada. Is it ? By how much time for a standard or a small game ?

3. More players. I see a lot more X-Wing players and tournaments for X-Wing than Armada where I live (Central California, United States) and meeting new people to play might be nice.

4. I don't really care that much about "tournament scenes" or "the meta". I play non-competitively even when I play in competitive settings and I only want to buy ships that are in movies or maybe the TV shows. What ships in that group are pretty good (on both sides) for a new player to get a pretty good (i.e. fun to play) Imperial and Rebel squadron together ? How many ships will I need ?

Thanks again for your feedback and help, everyone.

Oh, and to answer your other questions since I only answered Q4...

1) If you have the space to play Armada, I would argue that there isn't a big difference then. X Wing can take just as long to setup if not longer - more cardboard ship inserts to look through, more ships in general, unique dials for each ship (compared to a standard speed and command dial that's universal across all ships), 11 maneuver templates instead of 1, a similar amount of tokens... Depending on the lists you're running, you can have anywhere from 2-8 ships in X Wing - obviously just like Armada, the more ships you have, the most stuff you have to pull together.

2) Yes, absolutely it's a faster paced game. An average 100pt game should take 45-60min between two players who know how to play. Figure add another hour for each 100 points you add from there.

3) Yes again. X Wing has more players (it's been around longer, so it's had more time to grow. It's also faster to play and pick up, so that's more appealing. But Armada is cheaper and will continue to be cheaper. I have to feel that X Wing's player pool has stopped growing recently, the learning and cost curve to get into it is huge now). But Armada has been around for 2-3 years now and is about half as large as X Wing was at that time, and it has the benefit of lots of x wing players converting/adding themselves to the Armada game.

4) See above.

5 hours ago, Nightmonkey said:

Howdy. I've been playing Armada for a few years now (non-competitively with my friends) and have been thinking about getting into X-Wing. I really enjoy the fleet-sized battles of Armada, but there are a few things about X-Wing that appeal to me. But before I make the investment and diversify my gaming dollar, I have a few comments and questions. I'd really appreciate the feedback and any answers or insight you X-Wing players have. Thanks !

Here are a few reasons I was thinking about X-Wing-

1. Smaller table size. Setting up on a 3' x 3' mat is easier and quicker. I like the idea of being able to travel and set-up and X-Wing game with a smaller footprint (I already have two FFG mats anyway)

2. Reduced play time. I've heard that the play time for a game of X-Wing is less than Armada. Is it ? By how much time for a standard or a small game ?

3. More players. I see a lot more X-Wing players and tournaments for X-Wing than Armada where I live (Central California, United States) and meeting new people to play might be nice.

4. I don't really care that much about "tournament scenes" or "the meta". I play non-competitively even when I play in competitive settings and I only want to buy ships that are in movies or maybe the TV shows. What ships in that group are pretty good (on both sides) for a new player to get a pretty good (i.e. fun to play) Imperial and Rebel squadron together ? How many ships will I need ?

Thanks again for your feedback and help, everyone.

As someone who loves X-Wing and is heavily invested in it, I would not have bought X-Wing if I had played Armada first. Personally, I think Armada is a better game. I was just too invested both financially and mentally (as were my friends) to justify switching to Armada. Though that did not stop me from buying a bunch of capital ships when I saw them on sale for 50% off. That said, if you can afford it, both games are fun.

1. Does not seem like that much difference in setup between the two to me. The biggest difference is table space.
2. I have found that most casual games last a couple hours or more (including both setup and play time) if left without a time limit. Tournament games last 75 minutes. The only games that have gone quicker for me are the ones I table my opponents, or I get tabled by them.
3. Likely true for the time being.
4. In my experience ... all the ships. As has been illustrated in a great comic, "Mistakes were made".

Based on your post it sounds like there is a decent community of X-Wing players in your area. I would recommend getting a demo with them and getting a feel the X-Wing gaming environment/culture to see if it's your cup of tea.

2 hours ago, HungryFFG said:

As someone who loves X-Wing and is heavily invested in it, I would not have bought X-Wing if I had played Armada first. Personally, I think Armada is a better game. I was just too invested both financially and mentally (as were my friends) to justify switching to Armada. Though that did not stop me from buying a bunch of capital ships when I saw them on sale for 50% off. That said, if you can afford it, both games are fun.

This goes for me as well.. I started out with a lot of X-wing stuff, but now play Armada when i play competitively or want a heavy, satisfying, intensive game experience (currently the CC campaign). The two games caters to very different play styles (Armada makes your head hurt!) and to some extent to different player types (with a bunch liking both games). That said: X-wing is quick, easy to play, rather accessible (except for the more competitive environments) and most of all fun.. Coming from the Armada system of objectives i find the 3x3 + 100 points "standard" tournament format extremely boring. But for casual play there are some very fun options: The campaigns that comes with the Epic size ships are fun (but perhaps unbalanced in several cases), there are a huge heap of fan made campaigns available - many on the FFG Mission Control mission builder site. And last but definitely not least, the fantastic co-op Heroes of the Aturi cluster (mentioned by Heychadwick ealier). It is a thing of true beauty and provides Imperial Assault style co-op campaign play with starfighters. It looks good, is fun and also free (and played in many LFGS): http://dockingbay416.com/campaign/

I play both games, competitively and non. In my opinion only:

- I find X-wing less fiddly (fewer list components) and faster/easier to set up.

- X-wing play is much faster, especially in competition. Three rounds of X-wing is a decent evening tournament; three rounds of Armada is an all-day commitment.

- Playstyle is different between the two; X-wing is more reactive and more list dependent; Armada is more thoughtful in planning, and has wider swings based on objectives (though objectives would be a great add for x-wing)

- Lots more X-wing players and venues

- Lots more variations right now in casual play for X-wing. There's a campaign for both, but there are X-wing missions in various sets, and the doesn't appear to be analogues in Aramada of things like Dagobah Dave's Trench Run, Escalation, Hunger Games, or other type games.